Triumph over adversity is drama defined, and Oscar nominations often go to actors whose characters find victory over physical or mental afflictions. The earliest example goes back to 1947; that was the year that non-pro Harold Russell won Best Supporting Actor and a special award for “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Russell was a WWII veteran who lost both of his hands while making a training film. Of note: Of the 59, 27 of these nominations went on to a win. This year’s roster of stars playing afflicted characters includes Jake Gyllenhaal as bombing victim Jeff Baumer in “Stronger,” Andrew Garfield as polio survivor Robin Cavendish in “Breathe,” Bryan Cranston as a millionaire quadriplegic in “The Upside,” and Sally Hawkins in two roles, as an arthritic painter in “Maudie” and a mute lab worker in “The Shape of Water.”

Check out Oscar’s rather astonishing legacy of afflicted contenders below.

Triumph over adversity is drama defined, and Oscar nominations often go to actors whose characters find victory over physical or mental afflictions. The earliest example goes back to 1947; that was the year that non-pro Harold Russell won Best Supporting Actor and a special award for “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Russell was a WWII veteran who lost both of his hands while making a training film. Of note: Of the 59, 27 of these nominations went on to a win. This year’s roster of stars playing afflicted characters includes Jake Gyllenhaal as bombing victim Jeff Baumer in “Stronger,” Andrew Garfield as polio survivor Robin Cavendish in “Breathe,” Bryan Cranston as a millionaire quadriplegic in “The Upside,” and Sally Hawkins in two roles, as an arthritic painter in “Maudie” and a mute lab worker in “The Shape of Water.”

Check out Oscar’s rather astonishing legacy of afflicted contenders below.

Reviews for “mother!” have called it everything from “sickening” to “a berserk feast of filth,” but the most shocking thing about Darren Aronofsky’s wildly divisive new movie is that it’s hilarious. You wouldn’t expect to laugh so much during a movie that includes more disturbing Wtf moments than you can count, but “mother!” shatters expectations. As A.O. Scott puts in his review for the New York Times: “Don’t listen to anyone who natters on about how intense or disturbing it is; it’s a hoot!”

Aronofsky is the farthest thing from a comedic filmmaker. Take one look at “Requiem for a Dream” or “Black Swan” and you’re more likely to recoil from shock and discomfort than crack up. “mother!’s” grand statements on the history of humanity and its relationship to the Earth make it a successor to “The Fountain” and “Noah,” but Aronofsky’s
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To call Mother! a divisive movie would be just about the biggest understatement of 2017. Darren Aronofsky's brutal new thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem is essentially a violent, bloody allegory for . . . a few things, actually. Audiences who flocked to theaters expecting to see a run-of-the-mill horror movie might not have been disappointed, but a lot of people certainly walked out confused (or walked out of the movie early, period).
Because of all this, the daring film, which isn't exactly a surprise from the director of Black Swan and Requiem For a Dream, ended up pulling in a shockingly bad "F" rating on poll-based website Cinemascore (the worst score that can be given by audiences). The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Paramount worldwide president of marketing and distribution Megan Colligan to get her take on why it's inspired such backlash.
"This movie is very audacious and brave. You are
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5 reasons to see mother!5 reasons to see mother!Adriana Floridia9/19/2017 4:11:00 Pm

If you have any interest in movies at all, chances are you've heard of a little film called mother!

Darren Aronofsky, the director of Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, is back with his most controversial film yet. mother! is hard to talk about without going into spoiler territory, but we can assure you that it is a singular vision from one of our best working directors. If all of the talk and controversy surrounding the film isn't enough for you to check it out, we have five reasons why you need to see mother!

Michelle Pfeiffer is back
It has been four years since Michelle Pfeiffer appeared on the big screen, and even then her past few films were a series of flops. That's why seeing her return in mother! is all the more satisfying.
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Darren Aronofsky has been looking for a way to understand and communicate with the world for some time. In Pi, his galvanic debut feature, math, science, literature, and computer led a young genius to a series of numbers that could unlock the secrets of the stock market and the Torah, amongst other things. Requiem for a Dream depicted drugs as a way of both processing, funding, and ultimately corrupting or losing life. Physical and mental performance offered a way out for the lost souls at the center of The Wrestler and Black Swan, often requiring the destruction of the body …
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Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” is the sort of film that Hollywood has not seen from a major studio in a very long time. Even for a director like Aronofsky, who has earned a reputation for being a provocateur with films like “Black Swan” and “Requiem for a Dream,” “mother!” was a tale that aimed to challenge audiences in a way that no one could have expected.
Critics who saw the film at Venice and Toronto wrote shocked reviews with wildly different opinions. Some denounced the film as too extreme with its disturbing, violent climax designed to break all sorts of taboos.
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“Nothing is ever enough – I couldn’t create if it was!” You have to admire writer-director Darren Aronofsky’s almost religious devotion to the parable-like possibilities of hyperventilating, surrealist cinema. Having caught critics’ attention with the cult low-budget sci-fi oddity Pi and proved his gritty mettle with Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky gave us time-straddling cosmic madness in The Fountain, combined ballet with metamorphic fantasy in Black Swan, and conjured gigantic rock-monsters in the quasi-biblical babble-fest Noah. Now with Mother!, a paranoid nightmare that starts out like Polanski’s Repulsion and winds up closer to Apocalypse Now, he has stretched the envelope of outrageous mainstream cinema to breaking point – and beyond.

We start and end in flames, with an image of a fiery face giving way to a mysterious crystal, which
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The history of Batman on screen is an interesting one, with many various iterations of the character having appeared in various versions of the franchise. However, perhaps just as compelling as what we have seen in Batman movies is what we never got to see. For example, Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan) had a pitch for a Batman: Year One movie at one point. And who did he want to play the Caped Crusader? Joaquin Phoenix.

Much has been made of Darren Aronofsky's Batman: Year One movie that never was over the years, but this is the first we've heard of the director wanting to cast Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role. Aronofsky made the reveal while speaking to Yahoo Movies in order to promote his new movie, Mother! Here's what he had to say about it.

Darren Aronofsky is a fascinating film figure. Launching his career with then-beloved indie efforts Pi and Requiem For A Dream, the maximalist auteur has not only seen his style evolve from MTV-style fast edits and intense close ups to something more resembling a surreal-tinged neo-realism but also his critical stock plummet the way few filmmakers have. Be it the relative lukewarm response to his perplexing-yet-fascinating Noah or a revisionist distaste among critics for his early films heightened style, Aronofsky is a filmmaker that in many ways defies description.

And speaking of defying description, trying to describe Aronofsky’s latest film is about as hard as it gets.

Entitled mother!, Aronofsky turns from the biblical of his last film to the domestic space, introducing us to a character, played by Jennifer Lawrence, simply named Mother (never let it be said that Darren is a subtle filmmaker), the significant other of a
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Critics are calling ‘mother!’ a lot of things, but boring isn’t one of them. It’s the latest film from Darren Aronofsky, who made intense, fever-dream movies like “Pi” (1998), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), and “The Fountain” (2006) before earning a Best Director Oscar nomination for the equally hallucinatory “Black Swan” (2010). He followed that […]
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Directors’ trademarks is a series of articles that examines the “signatures” that filmmakers leave behind in their work. In this installment, with the release of Mother!, we’re looking at the trademark style and calling signs of Darren Aronofsky as director.

Darren Aronofsky trained as a field botanist after high school. As part of his studies, he embarked on a backpacking trip across Europe and the Middle East. This inspired him, and he decided to attend Harvard, eventually graduating with a degree in film studies. He then went on to the American Film Institute to study directing. In 1997, he released his first feature film, the low-budget Pi. This film was well received by critics, and Aronofsky won the best director award at Sundance. Due to the success of his debut, he was offered the opportunity to make another film with a larger budget. That film became Requiem for a Dream,
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Amercian Assassin follows the rise of Mitch Rapp (Dylan O'Brien), a CIA black ops recruit under the instruction of Cold War veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). The pair is then enlisted by CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on both military and civilian targets.
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Their sixth feature, set for release by Paramount on Sept. 15, stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a couple living a private life until unexpected visitors (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) arrive, changing everything in a very disturbing way.

“Most of our conversation leading up to production was about camera language,” says Libatique. As they did for “Swan” and “Pi” (1998), Aronofsky and Libatique filmed on Super 16mm and stylistically restricted compositions to close-ups, over-the-shoulder and point-of-view shots to intimately connect the audience to the narrative. Handheld cameras were used, and framing was informed by each character’s needs.

These strict aesthetics were applied during a three-month rehearsal in Brooklyn, where
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Darren Aronofsky is back. The polarizing Oscar nominee is causing a quite a stir with his latest movie, the Jennifer Lawrence-starring “mother!,” but anyone familiar with Aronofsky’s six previous features knows he’s always been a filmmaker who forces a strong reaction out of people. He’s been pushing the boundaries of his own filmmaking voice ever since “Pi” caused a frenzy at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998, and “mother!” proves he has no signs of stopping.

With “mother!” opening in theaters nationwide, we put all seven Aronofsky features against one another for the ultimate director ranking.

“Noah” is unquestionably Aronofsky’s weakest film, but that doesn’t mean it’s a total disaster. The biggest misstep the director makes in this $125 million Biblical epic is turning the odyssey of Noah into a sword-and-sandals showdown,
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After the failure of Batman and Robin, Warner Bros. put The Caped Crusader to bed indefinitely. We all know that. What is less known, is that around 2002 the studio began feeling things out again. Spider-Man was making waves. Bryan Singer’s X-Men was well received, with a sequel on its way. Warner Bros. probably felt like they were sitting on a gold-mine with Batman (they were), and began having dialogue with directors around Hollywood concerning ways to bring Batman back from the dead.

Welcome to the “Preview Reel” column, where we look at this week’s upcoming wide-release movies. It was the “it” movie last week as it debuted with a stunning $123 million, smashing numerous fall and horror movie records. There is no doubt it will stay number one this week, but there are two intriguing releases – Darren Aronofsky’s latest mind-bending thriller, Mother!, and a Michael Keaton spy thriller, American Assassin – that it will need to fend off to stay on top. There are a lot of thrills to be had at the Cineplex this weekend, but which one should you see?

Mother!

What we are excited about: Darren Aronofsky is one of the most unique filmmakers working today. Movies like Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Black Swan (2010) show that when his crazy vision works, it works very well. When it’s off, however, like in Pi (1998) or The Fountain (2006), it’s “really” off.
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Jennifer Lawrence suffers for her craft. That's just one of the many feelings you will probably have seeing Mother!, the latest creation from Darren Aronofsky, a director who previously tortured your eyes (and his actors) with films like Black Swan and Requiem For a Dream. But Lawrence goes the distance as the titular character on Aronofsky's modern allegory, until her character is reduced to, well, that's still up for debate.
Though lots of moviegoers will surely be interested in seeing the mysterious Mother! when it comes out this weekend, I'm sure there are many people who are either too scared to see it, or simply just curious to find out what happens in the movie. (Or maybe you've seen it but you're here because you watched the movie behind your hands and want to know what was going on). Either way, this is your last spoiler warning!
Mother! is an
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Darren Aronofsky doesn't make movies to help you feel better about yourself and the world. He's a cinematic virtuoso (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan) on a mission to probe and provoke. That makes him a rare bird in a multiplex of comic-book escapism and cheap formula. Be warned: mother! radiates a vibe of something dangerous if you get too close.

Javier Bardem, in a portrayal of demonic charm and intensity, stars as a famous poet living in seclusion in a beautiful country house with a young wife (Jennifer Lawrence
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